Dena Winick

February 02, 2001

Dena Winick, 71, a former Lamaze teacher, liberal activist and longtime Evanston Township High School guidance counselor, died of lung cancer Tuesday, Jan. 30, in her Glencoe home. Mrs. Winick's interests spanned numerous progressive movements and several teaching fields. She was a guidance counselor at the Evanston high school from 1968 until 1989. Before that, Mrs. Winick had been a kindergarten teacher, private school music instructor and camp counselor. She was a private Lamaze coach in the last 10 years. She attended the 1983 World Peace Conference in Prague, Czechoslovakia, promoted civil rights during her college years in Madison, Wis., and helped to organize the North Shore Anti-Nuclear Freeze in the 1980s. During her tenure at Evanston Township High School and afterward, former charges kept in close contact, to her delight. For the last two years, the school has given the Dena Winick Peace Action Award to high school seniors showing exceptional commitment to social action. In her free time, Mrs. Winick attended museums and cultural events in Chicago almost as a matter of principle, said her daughter, Rachel. "She was full of life. If she had an empty day, she had to plan it," the daughter said. "She was always having to do something, to find out more about life." The former Dena Cheifetz was raised in Humboldt Park by parents whose progressiveness began a streak of social involvement that lasted the rest of her life. After receiving her bachelor of education degree from the University of Wisconsin in the early-1950s, she taught music on the South Side and spent summers as a counselor and camp director at the Circle Pines camp in Michigan. Contacts there in turn led to a teaching stint at the avant-garde Miquon School near Philadelphia. She returned to Chicago in the mid-1960s, teaching kindergarten classes as she earned a master in education degree from Northeastern Illinois University. She taught Lamaze courses for most of the 1990s--standing in during dozens of deliveries in the process. Mrs. Winick most recently had co-founded "Lungevity," a group she hoped would help provide early screening for people predisposed to contracting lung cancer. In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Winick is survived by her husband, Burton; a son, Martin Fisher; two stepsons, Russel and Brad Winick; and four grandsons. A memorial service for Mrs. Winick will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday in the Winnetka Women's Club, 485 Maple St., Winnetka.